Entries from January 2018

Our snowdrop open days are on Saturday and Sunday 3rd and 4th February 11 - 3

There should be a lot to see as the garden is well advanced. Even some hellebores are flowering.
This is such an exciting time. Every day another snowdrop is out. Comet and Colossus look magnificent in quite large clumps now. Clare Blakeway Phillips and Fieldgate Prelude look beautiful. Fly Fishing, one of my favourites is in full flower.

We worry first that nothing will be out for the open day like last year when everything stopped and we had to postpone it. Then we worry that everything will be over. I think that this year all should be well.

Excitement is always tinged with anxiety. Where are Bess and Lady Elphinstone? Has something happened to them? I can't see them where they are supposed to be.

Then I can't identify a beautiful clump of short elwesii. It must be a named variety as it looks so specially handsome but there is nothing on my plan.

Snowdrop passion has its ups and downs but every day whatever the weather I have to do the rounds to see what is going on

2018 has begun miserably with rain, cloud and mud. So one has to find things in the garden to cheer one up. Scarlet berries for example. Cotoneaster lacteus has been weighed down with brilliant scarlet berries though the birds are now devouring them. Our shrub was planted in 1990 and is now 20 feet or more and an elegant branching shape. It has been pruned from time to time but only to lift its skirts the better to admire the bark and catch glimpses of the garden beyond.